


Team Up or Go Home

by Yeoyou



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Gen, pre-Philanthropy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-10 16:56:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13505799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeoyou/pseuds/Yeoyou
Summary: Hal goes to convince Snake to join him in Philanthropy. Which is a good idea. Trying to do that in the middle of an Alaskan winter with a car that breaks down, is not. [MGS Winter Games 2018]





	Team Up or Go Home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the MGS Winter Games' Challenge "Teamwork" (I'm a loose interpreter ;D)

There was snow in his nose. And his ears. Two places that it definitely wasn't supposed to be. He wasn't that much of a fan of snow anyway but when it intruded into his body, he could almost say that he hated it.  
He didn't use to. It was just one more unwelcome present thanks to Shadow Moses though not, in general, as bad as the nightmares or the irrational aversion to lockers and other small and confined places. The good thing about living in London was that he had to deal with very little of the white stuff, which - on the few occasions it did snow - usually took the form of greyish slush anyway.  
Here, there was no escaping it.  
Hal shivered and sneezed and tried unsuccessfully to remove the snow from his ears with fingers buried in thick gloves.  
At least the only confined space for miles around was his rental car, currently stuck in an invisible ditch. Hence him wading through snow, that was apparently trying to literally go through him.  
Maybe coming out here hadn't been such a terribly good idea after all. The doubts had been there almost before the idea itself of course but he'd shoved them aside again and again. When he'd did his digging online to find the faint traces of the vanished hero, when he'd booked the plane, packed his stuff, drove out to the airport, throughout the nerve-wrecking long plane ride - pressurized metal container at high altitude with no way out, _lovely!_ \- when he'd picked up the rental and drove and drove and drove a bit further until he could drive no more.  
Hal checked his GPS and stomped his boots in a futile attempt to unlodge the snow that clung to them. He didn't even manage to get any feeling back into his toes.  
"Okay, this is bad."  
There was no one to hear him but the endless snow and a few scraggly trees half buried.  
It surely could have waited until summer but oh no, once Hal's brain got hold of an idea, he was virtually blind to everything else. If he was being honest with himself, he was a bit obsessive. So once he'd decided to drag Solid Snake out of hiding and into Philanthropy, he'd run headlong into this mess.  
"Well done, _Otacon_. Your marvelous planning will surely convince Snake to help you!"  
Muttering, he trot on, eyes firmly fixed to the small screen of his GPS and wishing the little red dot of his destination wasn't quite so far away.

By Hal's estimation, it would take him about two days to thaw - based on his one and only attempt at a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in which the turkey had most definitely not had enough time to thaw.  
He couldn't remember ever being this cold. He'd never done any winter sports as a kid and never felt the need to do it as an adult. He generally preferred to look at nature through the medium of a screen. He wasn't immune to Nature's beauty, of course not, but it was so much easier to appreciate when you didn't have to worry about insects or sunburn or, well, snow in your nose and frozen toes!  
Hal tugged at his woolen hat but it still only just covered his ears, riding up on the voluminous scarf wrapped around his neck, that obscured most of his face and kept knocking his glasses askew.  
He'd half hoped he'd at least build up a sweat by wading through the snow, which was knee-deep in places. But the sweat cooled off so fast in these temperatures that all it did was make him shudder more. He wouldn't be surprised if it actually turned to ice the moment his pores started perspiring.  
Stumbling over a hidden rock brought an abrupt halt to these dispiriting thoughts and his movements in general.  
"Fucking Jupiter!"  
He spit out some more snow, while trying to figure out if he'd seriously hurt any limbs. No easy feat given how frozen all of them were. But it seemed he had been lucky, at least in this. He groped for his GPS and brushed away the snow from the screen. The red dot was still some way off.  
It was a struggle to get back on his feet and he rather looked like a walking snowman once he set back into motion. He hoped Snake would have a warm fire going. Possibly a tub in which he could soak in warm water for the next week or two.  
_And what if he isn't home? Or no longer lives here?_  
Hal stopped in his tracks. He hadn't thought of that before. But driving in vain to Snake's hut was a very different thing than walking there in vain.  
"No, no, no, he _must_ be there!" Hal mumbled through gritted teeth while forcing himself to start moving again. After all, he'd never know whether Snake was there or not if he froze to death out here. Schroedinger's Snake or something.  
"Gotta keep moving" It was difficult to get the words out with his teeth chattering violently but it also made him focus on something else than the cold in his bones and the stiff, frozen fabric of his jeans, how hard it was to get his legs to bend and how dark it had become.

Hal kept walking, kept staring at the little red dot on a wet screen with regular darting checks so he wouldn't run into any trees or boulders or moose.  
It seemed impossible at first, the distance melting only imperceptibly. But it did. Eventually, gradually, painfully slowly, but melting nevertheless.  
By the time he was practically on top of the dot, night had fallen and the world had grown still. A silence only interrupted by Hal's struggle through the snow. The crunching of his laboured steps, his panting, his muttering.  
When he could see the hut and the light spilling in abundance from the windows, whispering of warmth and life and safety, he almost wept from exhaustion and joy. He almost dropped down right then and there, the last few metres the hardest to cross.  
It took all his willpower and remaining strength to lift his arm and knock on the hard wood of the door. He slumped against the door frame, barely able to keep upright or his eyes from closing.  
When the door opened, he squeezed them shut against the light. The man in front of him just a blurred shadow.  
It took the shadow a moment to speak, trying to recognise the frozen figure buried in snow-covered clothes, but then Hal heard the gravelly baritone of Snake: "Otacon!?"  
There was surprise and disbelief and a certain amount of wariness in those three syllables but Hal was sure he'd never heard a more wonderful sound.  
He collected what strength he still had to nod and try to get his lips out of his scarf to mumble: "Uh ... can I come in?"

If Snake was curious about what had brought Hal up to Alaska at this time of day and season, he didn't let on. He ushered Hal into his miniscule bathroom and gave him some of his own clothes. They were too large, but dry and comfortable and Hal was only too happy to get out of his - which, however, proved to be rather difficult and almost had him stumble into the bathtub on several occasions.  
Once he emerged from the bathroom - wet fringe plastered to his forehead and the rest of his hair sticking out at odd angles, shuffling in socks that were too large and kept trying to escape from his feet - Snake buried him under a couple blankets on the couch, shoved a mug into his hands, full of hot, sweet tea, generously tipped up with whisky, and stoked up the fire before settling down in a battered old armchair.  
One of Snake's dogs, which looked almost as old and battered as the chair, put its snout onto its master's lap, looking adoringly up at him. Two other dogs were sniffling at the strange human in the blanket pile.  
With the fire crackling and spreading its warm glow over everything and the wind howling outside, the little cabin was the coziest place Hal had ever been outside his bed.  
Snake waited until Hal had dutifully sipped most of his beverage before speaking.  
"Coming here was a dumb idea."  
Hal bristled inside his warm fortress.  
"It wasn't! Just ...uh... the timing may have been a bit off."  
"You could have died out there." The very matter-of-factness of the statement made Hal shiver again.  
"Well, I didn't mean to get stuck in a ditch or snow drift or whatever and having to walk here! But what was I supposed to do? Here was already closer than the town and, besides, where I wanted to go anyway."  
Snake harrumphed.  
"And why exactly did you want to come here?"  
So Hal told him. About the leaked plans for Metal Gear, about all the military and para-military and private companies that were trying to build their own walking missile launchers and how the world would change - and not for the better! - if nobody stopped them. How somebody had to do something about that and how that somebody had to be him because of his guilt _and_ his unique knowledge of the technology and because it was the right thing to do.  
And how he couldn't do it alone.  
"Huh. So now you're here."  
"Now I'm here."  
Snake poured him some more tea, this time without the added alcohol, and stroked his dog's head while gazing into the fire.  
The flames cast sharp shadows over Snake's face and it became even more unreadable than it always had been.  
And Hal realised what he was asking of Snake. No, not Snake the soldier. But David, the man.  
Hal had clung to the codename in his mind because it was what he'd known him as most of the time. Because it seemed more believable than the ordinariness of 'David.' Because it suited him better to think of him as a soldier, as the hero that he could instrumentalise for his own purposes but that was exactly what Snake had run from when he'd turned his back to the military and become David once more.  
"Please?" Hal suddenly hated himself for asking but everything that had been true yesterday was still true. He needed Snake. Not David.  
"Okay."  
"Okay?" Hal nearly choked on his tea. He honestly hadn't believed that Snake would say yes and certainly not without some serious amount of convincing involved.  
"You're right. Someone has to stop this. And you'll just get yourself killed if nobody looks after you. I'm on your team, Otacon."  
"Oh nonono, not _my_ team. _Our_ team!"  
Snake grinned.  
"Huh. All right. _Our_ team."


End file.
